annenberg media ♪ caioniponsored bynnenberg/cpb narrator: the region of southeast asia and south pacific coains t fourth most populous country in the wod anthe largest islamic country in wor. theyre, in fact, one and the same: indonesia.

a frmentary state spadcross anpelagoof 13,iss, . latelyit does no east timor recently broke away rebel forces on aceh and irian jaya threaten the same. lwhile most of indonesiais , east timor recently broke away the island of balieh and irian is mostly hindu.e same. recently bombed is ta popular nightclub here? or it is because the tropical paradise was a mecca for western tourists? in theurrent war against terrorism, we explore the geographical roots of the tourist economy that crashed after the violent attack in 2002; whether the influxf visitors will threaten the loca indigenous culre; and how bali's distinct cuure fits into the complex diversity of indonesia.

still use the methods passed down from their grandfathers. but life around them is chaing. it's a lot greener yeah! look athan i thought all those coconut trees. some of those roadside stalls look interesting. yeah, might do those tomorrow. still haven't worked out the money though. ( people clamoring, airport announcements ) narror: balias bn a ist mecca for more t50 years.

still haven't worked out the money though. ( people clamoring, turistsng money and jobs, wod. but they also bring with the dierent cultural values. tourist: ...with the headdress. they're hindu ladies. what's the ligion here? uh, they're muslims. naator: mainining a strong sense of identity uhs been a challenge for bali as it embraces economi de. there seem to be an awfulot o tourist buses, too yeah, i've seen a lot of tourists in tse four-wheel drives, too. tourist: yeah? in tsebecause it's so ar. too. and they like the sun, the beach, the beer and so on.

welso y nese who are of placesal ople who are retired who come he for the peace and quiet. also, a of amecans come here. welso y nese who are of placesal narrator: oplthe balinese depenwho come he on the tourist economy,. but some worry thatalinese cuure will be overwhelme eernal . bali is one of the islands inhe world's largest archipelago which forms the couny ofndonesia more than 200 million people live here, and they speakore than 300 different languages. overcomi t barriers of language and e geographical isolation of island living has been big problem r the indonesian government. woman: well, it's, of course, a country that's in so many thousands of islands

over such a large area, it's hard to integte that into one economy. until there was a satellite inrbit over indonesia, for example, unall the peop ithe country couldn't hear the president of their country at the same time there's it's part of why ty have preserved their diversity,then. because there's different kis s on the different islands and the different regionalizations, anwhile they maintai it was very much easier to practicehe unity in diversity that's tir national motto, anwhile they maintai it was vbecause they wereo practicespatiay apartiversity and theyere in different territories narrator: t e gornment has snsored a largn each other in everyday life. out of the major population centers

to less developed areas. the one thing at has happened wi the migration and the change is that millio of ople have been moved out of java, out omadura toccupy and change e in forep is that millio of ople have been moved into pductive lar expo-- inilalm and in agriculture-- sulawesi into the spice islands. they have moved people from madura into parts of kamantan and this... and mosindonea and ll tribe, intoovernment anhote antou. and so it's only inosindonea the last few... couple decades that t ethnicand ligiog s been really scmbdinto one, the last few... couple decades whicon o level will help integration inhe long term,

bthat people are losing th. oprof differenteligions; and so it's bringing the ethnicroups intoay-to-day conflict in a way theyaven't been in the past. naator: more than half of ionesia's population lives on the relatively small island of java. the capital city jakarta is the political and economic center of indonesia. the isla obali is about 60 miles to the east of jakar bali is just 90 miles long and 50 miles wide, but has a population of two and a half millio li is unique in the predominantly muslim nation of innesia. the main religion here is hindu.

bali is indonesia's premier tourist destination, and that cates other confcts. man: we have two properties in bali. we have ou1,30employees. sheraton is focusing on delongocal ionesia to manage our chain of hotels. we have fi hotels w. we plan to have about ten. naator: domanager sardjano is not . your engsh in the class. nor is he a native balinese. he is at the cutting edge of a sategy to develop the indonesian economy through tourism. sardjano: i used to live ijakarta, the capital city of indonesia. i saw that bali was fast developing.

its the east ofasarofndonesia.soame reour o to open up hotel here omcrh narrator as parofeveloplatcd in jakar ofasresorts like nusa duaour o have changed e balinese lands. sajano: int,d o beery barren have changed e balinese lands. ere would be fisrmens living here, but hardly anythg. so what we didas, e governmentought e landfrom t, d they builtfive, six,s so what we didas, sardjano: the cal people still live now they are working with us. as cooks, waiters, stewards, security guards and so on.

narrator: the jobs given to locals are often at the lower pay levels. then agmeade:he work may there's not an awful lot of other ways to make a living. ere's inteive wet rice farming-- with all its very hard labor-- and there's some local fishing, although the international fisheries and the japanese trawlers have really hurt that. narrator: seventy percent of the locals now re on urismfor their income. and with theew jobs comes the requirement to learn at least some english. if you met a guest in the corridor here, and he asks you, "where is the laundry?" what would you say? how would you answer him? sardjano: most of these young people come from the villages around the hotels. at our hotel, for instance, 60% of the staff are fromhe island of bali i. that's why they are mostly hindu.

the other 40% come from java and other parts of indonesia. that's why they are mostly muslims or christian. excellent. your english is very good. you should be working in the front office. ( teaching staff in local language ) narrator: the mix of cultures within the workforce at the hotels results from a government policy encouraging people to move away fromhe country's cities-- suffering crowded development-- to the new tourist areas. but that strategy presents its own problems. sardjano: the tourism industry also has some negative aspts. with the westerners coming, then they come and they bring their western lifestyle. if you ask an indonesian "what comes to your mind when you think of bali?"

then very innocentlyhey will y, "drugs, s, prostitutes." narrator: kutas the olst tourist area in bali. critics say 's tourism gone mad, resulting in overcrowding, overdevelopment and environmental damage. surfers first came here looking for the dream wave. they delighted in the relaxed lifestyle and the unique culture. now its hard to find the gentle, highlyigio balinese way of life they foundo attractive. but attempts are being made to balanceousm fe and the natural enviroent in places throughout indonesia. bali, t town of ud recognized the problems of tourism from the beginning. man:the problem t, it's we...

moreourists, pu--cemo balinese ow and also, obviously, it's so many different kind of tourist coming, they all will bring different expectation from what we... we can offer. ce in r fy. it's his job to protect the local culture. restrictions have been placed on activities tstreet peddlersalifesty are not allowed re. there are no large modern neon signs. tourists are welcome in the temples, mustssehecording oc custo the prince believes the banese tradition willurvive raka: but one thing, as long as we can hold on

to our concept, to own principle, then we be able to take what best for us and to offer what best to others. like bees and flowers-- they take each other, but they giving each other at the same time. and that's what make, i think, bali still survive-- causofnerg that kind of power that we still have. meade: a constant onslaught of tourists, millions and millions a year-- this isn't new. this w going and when all the surfers... when other people in asia were throwing the hippies out and were cutting their hair at airports and... bali was adopting them. people have been coming into bali as tourism for a long time and it comes closer to bali converting them to their culture than losing theirs to the foreigners.

but it's out of scale now. i mean, how many millions can you absorb as tourists? and what o jobs that aren't dead-end hotel jobs can there be? so the economic development issues, i think, are very serious. but i personally can't see the threat to balinese culture. they have figured that one out. narrator: malaysia is a country which is parteninsula and part island. and is farore developed than culturallyiverocietysia.yet,iked

is siking. malaysia, which has had remarkable economic growth over the past 40 years, is also home to a variety of ethnic and religious groups. approximately 60% of the population is malay; 30%, ethnic chinese; and just under ten percent are of indian descent. let's look at how malaysia has worked to achieve a balance between the different ethnic groups with its mticultural society as it moves through the 21st century. malaysia is at the crossroads of maritime trade one hundred years ago, d ariait was even reo. under british colonial rule, cultural exchangesetween many of the wod's peoples flourished on this peninsula.

about 180 miles south of kuala lumpur, the nation's capital, lies the village of rengit in the southwest part of the state of johor. nagata junji is a geographer who is studying how different ethnic groups mingle in malaysia. ethnic makeup varies by region. this village is about 80% malay and 20% chinese. ( women laughing ) the village was settled about 90 years ago, mostly by malays. nagata wants to find out how the malays and chinese have interacted over the years and how their society has become structured to ease relations between the two groups.

five times a day, the sound of the koran, the islamic bible, echoes throughout the village. islam is a major influence on the lives of the malay people. nagata visits one malay farming family. sohot bin kamin is the son of malay settlers. he and his wife live here with their five children and four grandchildren. ( speaking malay ) translator: my father came here from java. i remember him telling me how they cleared the jungle, built the roads all by themselves and planted their crops.

they didn't have much to eat, and rice wasn't available, so they mostly ate potatoes. narrator: most farmers in this area grow oil palms. sowo however, even with this income, he barely makes enough to feed his family. sohot sells the oil palms that he harvests to a broker who lives in the same village. sia yong tee, an ethnic chinese, is also a second-generation son of settlers.

( conversing in malay ) ( translated ): could i ask you what tay's pri is for palm oil? ( translated ): two hundred-plus ringgit per ton. how much do you think is here? more than a ton and a half, i'd say. narror: sia became an oil palm broker he and his family handle 30and 400 to of oil palm a. the family income is now considerably more than that of the average malay farming household. twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, sia lights incense for the spirits of his ancestors.

his late father cameere from china in the middle 1920s. sia says his roots run deep in this village. ( speaking malay ) translator: i hope that my sons will continue with the family business. i think that oil palm cultivation will increase, and i hope that they will stay with it for a long time. narrator: in 1969, the capital, kuala lumpur, erupted in race riots after an election. malays were pitted against ethnic chinese as rural malays expressed their resentment over the rising economic might of the urban chinese. after the riots, the government instituted social policies aimed at reducing the economic gap between the different ethnic groups. "bumiputera," or "malays first," is at the heart of this policy.

it pces controls on education and employment and extends across the entire range of social relations. after the race riots in the '60s, the government decided that they had to break that identification. they had to bring malays into the city, into the growing manufacturing, into the future of the country and build one malaysia that way, that if they just left them as the poor farmers out in the countryside, it was going to be nothing but trouble. and so their policies made malay the national language. they saved the university positions for the malays; they made the schools in malay; they put all the... the banking was for malay. companies had to be malay, and then they might hire chinese subcontractors to do the actual printing. but the printing/publishing companies had to be malay. and so the chinese who had been wealthy-- a lot of them left to canada and to singapore.

for the chinese who remained, however-- they stayed in an economy that was growing in prosperity, a country that was growing. and it's not as though their land or their money or anything was taken from them; it's the shift in the opportunities. it's like affirmative action where the people need... in the affirmative action have the military and have the power and have the government to do it-- kind of affirmative action with teeth... fangs. and it succeeded in the sense that malaysia... in my time, malaysia has gone from being only 30% urban-- and the malays were almost entirely rural-- to being a clear majority urban, when... almost 70% overall, and a majority of malays now live in the city. so this is quite a transformation. naator: thcts of the social changes

extend even to the life of farm families. sohot's children are moving away from agriculture and into other occupations. sohot's only son, amerul, graduated this year from a trade school, ane factory producesg in d assembles electrical parts fosiorean factories such as this one are abeing builall over malaysia. relationships are changing as malays and non-malays sit down next to one another on the assembly line. ( speaking chinese ) translator: yes, we who manage the factory are chinese malaysians, but sometimes we are not ready

to understand other malay cultures. so in this factory, we set up a special counseling room where malay workers can visit and talk about whatever is on their mind-- if they have problems on the job, or if they have ideas about their work. we would like to make the best of use of their voices for the management of our company. narrator: but bridging the cultural gulf between malay and non-malay is no small task. meade: we're not talking little differences here. i mean, chinese civilization, indian civilization, malay civilization; different alphabets, different literatures, different philosophies. they all have their different national holidays; they all have their different marital patterns. you can have three wives if you're malay. you can't have three wives if you're an indian. if you're christian, you can't, but if you're muslim, you can. different holidays. muslims have to fast. they'll go in and take malays out of restaurants

during ramadan if they're not fasting. but that doesn't mean that the europeans or the chinese or the indians have to fast. it's a truly plural society. ( speaking malay ) translator: rather than one ethnic group taking on the culture of another, we have people maintaining their own customs and lifestyles while living together. another important thing is that, for instance, the old framework of the chinese being the merchants and the malays being the farmers is changing. malays are aggressively moving into employment outside of the agricultural sector. i think that big changes are on the horizon, and these changes will hold great importance for the future. narrator: today, malaysia has set its sights

on entering the ranks of fby the year 2020.s under the banner of "vision 2020," it is pursuing long-term ofeconomic development. meade: malaysia's current vision is a cyber country. they want to take cybernetics, information, the future of the computer age away from singapore and to build a whole corridor in the city of the most advanced electronic state in the world. narrator: for now, malaysia has taken steps to becoming an economic tiger in southeast asia. its success will be revealed in how malaysia continues to develop as a stable multicultural society.

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[ indistinct conversations ] aah! good morning. good morning. hello. are you going to tour the exhibition? well, i've seen the show, you know. i think it looks good. well, it's certainly a grand theme. genesis. how can you beat genesis, right? [ laughing ] and the thing that you discover about it, it's interesting because you discover that, compositionally, the most difficult thing about the picture

is not the figures, it's a tree. why is that? you have to find a place for it. if you have a pattern of some kind -- if you have no tree, then anything you do -- you can turn it upside down, lay it down, whatever, you know -- but a tree can only grow up. the only thing i'd say with genesis is the serpent or the snake because you can do anything you want with it. so wherever you feel there's some emptiness, put the snake in. and then find some empty place there, bring the snake there. you can put him anywhere, so that saves you. cheim: what do you think about the difference between figurative paintings and abstract paintings, and is there a difference at all? yeah. when you work where you have - where you're not interrupted with an image, you're working completely free of the image, you can do anything at any time without stopping,

without pausing to think of where it is, what's it doing. so a few years ago, when i put the figures in, i knew i was making it difficult. and i wondered how i would be able to handle that difficulty. but it's still about paint, mostly. i try not to lose sight of it, but, of course, people think that i'm trying to be funny with the figures, but i'm not. i think they become more real to me. resnick: something peculiar about artists... they have ups and downs. you climb, climb, climb, you're on a plateau,

and for a while, whatever you do is just wonderful, or you think it is, and then you slide down it. if you're a good artist, you're going to go down. and it's up to you. and pulling yourself up again is the most importanpart of your life. it's getting out of the bottom that you put everything into yourself. that's when you change yourself to be the goddes that you'll be. you always carry the memory of the bottom and fear of the bottom. and when you start going to the bottom, it's panic. there are people who can't stand the panic. what happens then is that they begin to develop

some kind of technique to keep out of that hole. once they do that, it's finished. they never go any further. they're done. what i want to do is get rid of this oil. and i'm ready to paint, but i'm not going to because i don't have the faintest idea what to do now. it's not in my head to do anything. i can't just go and move a brush around.

i have to have a beginning. i don't want to just use models, figures. i just want to have some reason. and the beginning is adam and eve and a tree and a serpent and a garden, and that's enough, see. except that pat didn't like that kind of biblical con-- you know. and she said, "don't use adam and eve and creation. just say, 'you and me.'" and i liked that very much. i almost got that, didn't i, pat? passlof: yes. i can see just what i can do, and i could almost see the right thing to do. it wouldn't take much to get this started, huh? but, you know, i did this all in a couple of hours. e first five minutes is the best.

[ laughing ] after that, you're in trouble. what am i going to do with these paintings? i have to think of something that will give me a start. i don't like the size of the figures. it's the wrong size. passlof: well, it's easy to cut them down. mm-mmm. i thought i could manage this size, and i now i see -- they are much larger than you usually do. yeah. and this, of course, is ridiculous. and that's ridiculous. absolutely ridiculous.

the painting at the end? yeah. i mean, it's... just aogance. just arrogance, thinking anything i do is fine. just arrogance. actually, behind that red figure, towards the right, you can see a little yellow. you see it? and that could be the head and the arm. much better than the figure in front. and there are even legs there, you know, underneath the arm. that figure could be much better than the red one. and with that idea, which i'll try to remember when i come to it, the whole painting can start. that's a start. and you can see i changed things.

maybe i can reach it. i can't reach it. yeah, i can reach it. it sounds ridiculous to start a large painting with no plan, no sketch, no diagram, no composition. ah! nothing -- you're looking at a blank canvas, and you say, "what will i do?" so you make a brush mark. you have to find the beginning. now, i never intended to do anything like this. that's it.

yellow, red, black, white -- they're useful tools, right? paint is a useful thing. so you need those different colors in order to kind of chop away at each other. the influence of the french school of painting -- van gogh and the impressionists -- was very strong in new york in the '30s. so everybody talked about color and matisse. if you're modern, you use color. well, first of all, color is expensive. but then on the other hand, i don't really know whether i like those very colorful blues and yellows and oranges. i knew an older artist who once lived in paris. one day i said to him, "can you tell me something about color?" he says, "there's one thing i can tell you --

nobody understands color." i said, "fine, that's just the way it is with me." and that was the end of that problem. around 1958, '59, somewhere around there, i started a painting. it was 18 feet by about 9 or 10 feet, and i'd never done a painting that big. and then i realized i didn't have the space to come back to see my painting. it was too close, and i couldn't seem to get far enough away to see what i'm doing. then my feeling about how i see a painting changed. i realized every time i do something, if i have to run back to take a look at it,

it's impossible. i can't paint that way. ah! ah! instead of looking, i had to feel it. ah! in order to feel it, to work with it, i had to carry that feeling. well, a little more, little more, little more. it really made the biggest difference in my life as far as painting goes. pat responds to something much more beautiful, much more rhythmic. i'm really not rhythmical or beautiful. i'm just like a different something. i fall. i-i keep from falling. i'm falling, but i keep from falling. that's me. pat is just the most beautiful.

pat, who are these famous people? they're people from the museum. they're people from the museum? this sporty guy, who is he? looks like a collector. i'm sure he may be. i didn't meet pat till after the war, '49. passlof: '48. resnick: '48. passlof: i was studying with bill de kooning the summer before milton returned from paris. and bill thought of milton as his best friend and his most interesting artist friend, the person he could talk with most. and he kept saying, "wait till you meet milton. you got to meet milton." and that fall, when milton got back from paris, one day, i was in bill's studio and milton came, and we met. resnick: but i could see pat, you know, was special.

passlof: i'm, perhaps, overly romantic. you can see that the figures are moving, but i'm actually restraining myself. you can imagine what they would be doing. they would be flying off the paint if i wasn't. but i think intensity depends on restraint, preventing things from moving. and we all learned that a little bit

inhe so-called abstract expressionist period when everything was going very fast. resnick: the difference between us -- i like to waste my paint. right. she never wastes her paint. i waste it. it's on the floor. pat can have a tube of color that she knows exactly what she's going to use it for. it's important to her, which is not for me. so her way of painting has to do with what she sees and how she uses it. passlof: i work abstractly in the beginning. i don't bring the figure or the horse or the tree into it. i find them in the abstraction, so it comes out of memory. you know, i'm a very good craftsman,

so that part of it is the part i really don't want to call on. and so i just have ways of using large brushes that i can't draw well with. i'm deliberately undoing my color sense, my ability to draw. i'm tricking myself, in a way, so that what happens will be surprising to me. i'll tell you, this is a good story. max hutchinson gallery was showing the painting called "new bride," and the price was like $50,000 or something.

now, there is a guy, melzack, he was a collector, and he said to me, "i want to buy that painting 'new bride,' but i'm not going to have anything to do with max." so this guy who had a store on grant street says, "i have this building which had been a synagogue, "and i want you to have it for a studio. i know you need a studio." so i said, "well, i would like to have it, but i don't know if i have the money." he said, "i'm going to give it to you for practically nothing." so i said, "how much?" and he told me, i think, $40,000, $45,000 for that building. so i called up melzack in washington. i said, "i need $40,000. "do you really want that painting? i'll get it from max." melzack said, "well, milton, i don't know whether i can afford to buy a painting now."

so i said, "okay," and i went to paint, and while i was painting, the telephone rang. and i said, "that's melzack, i know it is." so i got on the phone. he says, "i'll give you $30,000." so i says, "okay," and i bought that building. the whole thing opens up into a kind of growing field. now, feelings that are too strong are hopeless. you go mad. you say, "enough, goodbye!" ah! so there is a kind of artistic, maybe, feeling which is not too strong, not too weak, and it just seems as if you can put yourself up against it. you can almost push against that so that it's there for you. and if you sense that, then you don't have to see your painting anymore.

if you put paint there, you're putting it into that feeling. ah! nobody i know has ever painted like that, but that's how i painted for the last 40, 50 years. ahhh! enough. [ sighs ] [ sighing ] ah! i'm tired. technique -- i have no technique. i'll tell you though, what it amounts to is, a painting has to be occupied. all the parts have to be active. it has to have feeling. now, this feeling doesn't have to be so physical, but it has to be as if i come at you,

and you're suddenly frightened, or you have a glass, and there's something in it, and it's kind of a funny color, and someone says, "drink it." and you say, "what's in it?" and they say, "drink it." and you say, "but what's in it?" and they say, "if you don't drink it, i'll shoot you." so you have to drink it. so that's the feeling. i have to put paint on. that's the only way to work. you just put paint on and let paint do the talking. if you use a brush, you can use it any old way you want, you know. you can dip a whole bucket of paint on it and spread it all over. you can use it on the side, or you can wipe it, you know. i have lots of brushes, hundreds of brushes, and i don't clean them. you know, i just leave them around.

after i stop painting, i just leave them. and they get a little stiff, and that becomes another character in the brush. and then you kind of stamp it into the carpet under your feet and loosen it up. and finally, when you look at the brush, it's covered with paint. you throw it away. this painting, somehow, i don't remember anymore.

but it seemed that everything had disappeared at one time, but there was a space in the middle, and i thought i'd put a tree in the middle. and that's the worst place for a tree. i thought it would irritate me enough to put one there. you have to do something to yourself to overcome these feelings you have about a painting being right or wrong. you have to kill those ideas if you can. this painting had once upon a time been the only painting that was finished. and then because it was finished, i hated it because i can see i can do something else with it. to tell you the truth, all i like is that snake. that's it. trouble. trouble, trouble, trouble. so you can see that the figures and the trees

and all the things that's supposed to tell you what the painting is all about, is not. it isn't really the painting. the painting is what paint does. and you have to be a kind of straw in the wind. you have to give in to what the master, paint, does in the picture. and you give in to it. you paint what it's telling you to do. man: people talk to us a great deal, and, you know, they come in steadily to see the work that you're doing and have been doing with images. and even once in a while, you know, somebody buys one.

resnick: the paintings are really something i work on. and once i no longer work on them, they're not really the same thing. they look different. i don't think they're my paintings anymore. -- captions by vitac -- burbank, pittsburgh, washington

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captioning made possible by the annenberg/cpb project as the 16th century ended and the 17th began, here in catholic rome there was a feeling of jubilation, a sense of rebirth. pope paul v, in the year of our lord 1612, has brought water 35 miles from the healthiest springs in bracciano through new and restored aqueducts. what better way to sigl the revival of the ancient grandeur of rome

than to restore its renowned system for bringing water from distant mountains to the city streets? pope paul's new water supply, the acqua paola, or paul's water as it was called, was soon rushing into the daylight from fountains all around the city. the finest of these fountains was designed by sculptor and architect, gian lorenzo bernini. it was built in the piazza navona which stood on foundations of an ancient stadium, a material expression of the idea of eternal rome. the city had survived 100 years of political and religious turmoil, of war and destruction. despite invasions of european monarchs who'd attempted to conquer the city on the pretext of defending it, it had preserved its independence. most important, the catholic church had survived the rise of protestantism and its challenge

to rome's authority. it was an extraordinary period of expansion as european colonization and exploration took its influence to the farthest corners of the earth. this roman catholic renewal, which historians call the counter reformation, was given added purpose and vigor by a remarkable group of visionaries. the spanish mystic and philosopher teresa of avila insisted that everyone could experience intense and personal knowledge of god. ignatius loyol founder of the jesuiteaching order, inspired his followers to go to work with spiritual fervor in the real world, and the missionary francis xavier carried to india and japan the messe of the roman church. to fulfill the needs of the resurgent church, artists and architects all over europe flocked into rome. they came to design and ornament the churches that were built in the explosion of activity

inspired by the counter reformation. the church reformers called for works of art and architecture that would bring people into the churches, inspire faith and religious commitment. an artistic revival resulted, and a new style. it was an exuberant style reflecting the optimism and assertiveness of the 17th-century church. this style is known as the baroque. the fresco on the ceiling above our heads was painted by pietro da cortona in the 1630s. it decorates the reception hall of barberini palace in rome, home of pope urban viii, a great patron of the arts.

to the modern sensibility, molded by the notion that less is more, it may seem decorative and confusing. a careful look at this work, done at the height of the baroque period, reveals a well-thought-out design based on a written plan. when urban looked up at his ceiling, he saw the figure of divine providence stretch her arms to a chorus of maidens who carry his family emblem, the barberini bees. they carry the bees to crossed keys of saint peter, the symbol of the papacy, and to the papal crown. the painting's meant to be read. it tells us that pope urban viii is a great and worthy man, but also that the ideals of the classical world have been subordinated to the values of triumphant christianity. every figure in this swirling panorama has meaning.

the scenes painted around the sides of the ceiling tell stories extolling the pope's virtues. his unyielding battle against heresy is here symbolized by athena destroying insolence and pride in the shape of the giants. here his piety conquers lust and intemperance, represented by the satyrs. like the artists of the renaissance, cortona uses the vocabulary of classical antiquity, but draws his figures naturalistically, with lifelike vigor and sensuality. the architectural elements are not real but are painted as if they were. they blur the distinction between real and illusory space, at the same time suggesting hidden depths out of which the painted figures seem to tumble. overlapping layers of light and dark create a sensation of breathtaking movement.

in this one ceiling, we have all the elements of the high baroque style-- a clearly defined program, a dynamic and dramatic tension between naturalism and classicism, between illusion and reality, between light and dark, and always movement. why were baroque artists concerned with illusion and reality, with light and dark, with movement, time, and space? before the 16th century, earth was believed to be the unmoving center of the universe about which sun, stars, and planets revolved. existence of humans and their salvation was the purpose of the universe. in 1543, the astronomer copernicus published his work on the revolutions of heavenly bodies. his revelation that the earth moved around the sun challenged people's perceptions of themselves. the title page of galileo's book on the solar system

shows copernicus demonstrating to the revered ancient philosophers aristotle and ptolemy that their view had been wrong. the earth was one of many celestial bodies, all of which obeyed the same impartial laws. at the same time europeans learned of that revelation, the discovery of the americas and the exploration of the far east revealed that europe wasn't the center of the world. in this time of spiritual crisis provoked by the explosion of knowledge, artists sought new ways of seeing and understanding. the out-thrust left arm of the disciple startled and astonished its first viewers in 1600. it breaks into the space in which we stand. the naturalism of this painting of christ at emmaus by michelangelo merisi, known as caravaggio, was unprecedented. its intention is to convince us we're participants in this astonishing event,

god's presence in the flesh. we may no longer regard the earth as unique, caravaggio seems to be saying, but god has dwelt amongst us. divinity and sanctity are to be found in our midst. caravaggio went out into rome's streets and put people he found there in his paintings. he came to rome from northern italy in the last decade of the 16th century. a strange, violent, driven man, he was in permanent revolt against authority. caravaggio was always in trouble with police. he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the city. he was a carouser and a libertine and painted himself that way...

but the way he painted religious subjects was as shocking to his contemporaries as his behavior. he painted saint peter as a confused and frightened old man... the virgin, in life, as a neighborhood housewife. the virgin in death he painted as a swollen, careworn corpse. the painting was rejected by monks who commissioned it. never had they seen the virgin mary represented as dead rather thadying. caravaggio was rebelling against idealized depictions such as this conversion of saint paul by taddeo zuccaro. this was the conventional way in which divine intervention on earth was portrayed, like a fabulous dream, but caravaggio sought to draw the beholder in, to make the worshiper a participant

in the drama enacted on the canvas. in a small chapel in the church of santa maria del popolo in rome, caravaggio's conversion of saint paul depicts the intrusion of the divine into human life as a real moment meant to be seen from the perspective of someone kneeling in prayer. a contemporary commented that it looked like an accident in a blacksmith's shop. caravaggio, in the spirit of the counter reformation saints, was pleading through his pictures for man's direct knowledge of god. a principal device he used to achieve his purpose wa chiaro scuro, the contrast of light and dark in the canvas. caravaggio rejected the convention of attributing the light source to a radiant divine figure. here no divinity is visible. there's no explanation for the light source within the painting. light just appears and totally overwhelms paul. light self is the presence of god. darkness is where god is not.

caravaggio was one of the first artistic bohemians. rebellious, uncompromising, and dissolute, he dd at 37. late in his short life, he portrayed himself as the decapitated goliath. it's the work of a deeply religious man depicting his own damnation. while caravaggio of asaw himselfigious man in the headless goliath, the young gian lorenzo berni gave his features to the heroic david. bernini took the immediacy he found in caravaggio's paintings and recreated it in marble with phenomenal and unprecedented virtuosity. the sculptors of the renaissance had often treated the david theme. donatello's david is serenely elegant. michelangelo's is contained...

perfect... full of potential. t bernini's david moves... turns aggressively to confront the observer. true to the spirit of the baroque, this david is meant to be experienced. the viewpoint in this case, of course, is that of goliath. it's said that the cardinal maffeo barberini held a mirror to bernini's face so the young prodigy could use his own expression of intense concentration fothe david. when the cardinal became pope urban viii, he said to the artist,

"it is your good luck to see maffeo barberini pope, "but we are even luckier, "for the cavaliere bernini lives at the time of our pontificate." there is scarcely a corner of rome that was not graced by bernini's touch... from the small witty adornment, the elephant and the obelisk in the little piazza of santa maria sopra minerva... to the vast piazza and itenclosing colonnade, in front of the basilica of saint peter.

"he is a rare man," said urban viii, "and a sublime artist borne by divine disposition and for the glory of rome." these statements by the pope about his favorite artist are significant in two ways. they were prophetic of the prodigious role bernini would play in his works for urban and the succeeding popes for a period of 60 years. rome was transformed into a modern city replete with public monuments meant not just for the elite but for everyone to admire and enjoy. the open arms of the vast porticos

in front of saint peter's convey exactly this sense of outreach beyond the traditional bonds of society to include every individual in a universal embrace. this concern is made visible in what bernini described as "his least bad work." the cornaro family chapel, dedicated to 16th-century spanish mystic saint teresa of avila, which bernini created about 1650 in the church of santa maria della vittoria in rome. oueyes are met by those of the cardinal patron who looks out from among his ancestors and accompanies the visitor down the nave to view the chapel from the center of the crossg. there we are confronted with a spectacle

of truly cosmic proportions. in the pavement before the altar, gesticulating skeletons rise from the lower depths to face their maker at the end of time. the vault of the chapel has scenes from teresa's life. bernini makes a chorus of winged, cloud-borne angels-- singing, playing instruments, and strewing flowers-- seem to filter through the solid vault, filling the chapel with their fragrant hymns of praise and celebration. at the sides, the members of the cornaro family appear in balconies with architectural backgrounds whose perspectives merge with that of the church. their space becomes indistinguishable from ours. they consider, study, discuss, describe, indicate, and thereby bear witness

to a mysterious event in which they participate, encouraging us to join them. here bernini created a visual sensation by making a literal portrayal of a woman in ecstasy. from time immemorial, mystics have used the vocabulary of earthly love to convey their feelings to others. communion with god is like communion with the mother, only infinitely more so. in her autobiography, teresa describes the famous vision of the transverberation. "in the angel's hands, i saw a long golden spear, "and at the end of the iron tip, "i seem to see a point of fire. "with this, he pierced my heart several times, "penetrating by entrails. "when he drew it out, he left me completely afire with a great love for god." the prime tenet of christianity

is that god created the world out of his love for humanity. bernini made love and creation the key to his chapel. [michael wood] baroque architecture follows different laws from those of antiquity and the renaissae. gone is equillibrium and logic. instead, the framework seems to move. boundaries seem to melt and walls to dance. the stone seems to bend itlf to the will of the architect. the most willful architect of them all was francesco borromini. saint ivo della sapienza is borromini's masterpiece. his architecture is intellectually complex, a startling amalgam of mathematics and fantasy. he knew the history of architecture d drew upon the past boldly and freely. the facade curves in, but the dome above it curves out, presenting the beholder with a dramatic contrast.

using a symmetry so odd that it seems almost asymmetrical, he opposes convex and concave arcs. the result is that the building itself seems to be alive and pulsating. borromini's work emphasized one of the central teachings of the roman catholic church in the 17th century. salvation could not be attained by reason alone, nor by simple sensual experience. it required an imaginative leap of faith. in bewildering the eye and challenging the mind, borromini sought to plunge the worshiper into the mystery of salvation. not everyone understood. a contemporary critic wrote, "everyone gets in his head a new idea "and displays it in public squares and upon facades, madly deforming buildings and even towns." but an official of borromini's church of san carlo recorded, "nothing similar, with regard to artistic merit, "can be found anywhere in the world. "members of different nations arrive daily in rome

"and try to procure plans of the church. "we've been asked for them by germans, flemings, frenchmen, spaniards, and even indians." the baroque style in architecture, that had its roots in counter reformation rome, spread north into war-torn germany and austria. during most of the 17th century, austria was preoccupied with its lonely fight against the encroaching armies of the ottoman turks. when the austrians defeated the muslim turks at the gates of vienna in 1683, a new era began. the hapsburg holy roman emperors turned to rebuilding their ravaged land. all along the danube, where bleak fortresses had guarded the river, a chain of magnificent abbeys was built. the victory over the turks meant that money

was now available for grand enterprises. the monks' taxes paid for buildings rather than for weapons. these abbeys were meant to serve not only as religious communities, but also as hospices for the emperor. saint florian's abbey, begun in 1689, is the work of an italian and an austrian-- carlo carlone and jakob prandtauer. in true baroque fashion, the new abbey was a stage upon which royal ritual could be played out by the visiting emperor. paradoxically, the stage usually lacked its leading actor, for the emperor himself rarely visited any of the abbeys. but it didn't matter. the object was not imperial housing. it was to make a political point, to bear witness to the unity of christianity and empire.

here we're dealing not with the glorification of an individual emperor, but with the need to assert the divine right to rule of an institution, the hapsburg empire. newly victorious over the turks, the austrians believed themselves to be the saviors of christian europe. they proclaimed their triumph in their art and in their architecture. the karlskirche, or charles church, in vienna, is an example of the power of the christian faith to absorb and transfigure many influences. the gabled portico reminds us of the pantheon. the columns suggest trajan's column in imperial rome

as well as the bible's description of solomon's temple. the dome is like the domes of papal rome. towers at the ends of the building suggest an imperial fortress. begun in 1716, the charles church is the work of fischer von erlach, who studied works of bernini and borromini in rome. it's dedicated to charles borromeo, one of the great counter reformation saints. it's not a coincidence that the austrian emperor at the time was also named charles. for in the lands where absolute monarchs ruled, architecture was part of the vocabulary of royal power. the belvedere palace in vienna was built in 1721 for prince eugene of savoy, the general who led the austrians to their victory over the turks. the architect was lucas von hildebrandt. the belvedere actually consists of two palaces set at opposite ends of an enormous formal garden

in which nature has been completely subdued. the design is based on a simple program. the two palaces and the garden present the visitor with an allegory of life's journey. at one end, where prince eugene lived, is the lower belvedere and its gardens representing the earth. at the other end, where visitors were received, the upper belvedere, are the heavens. at first, you think you can go directly to the palace, but you find that you cannot. the grand staircase in the center of the garden reveals itself to be a cascade, water. you must go to the left or to the right. the garden forces you to be in an allegory of the journey to eternity. the palace faces north, so there's always a shadow on its facade.

like the heaven it represents, you can't read its features until you're very close. as you arrive at the entrance hall, you're reminded you may have to struggle like hercules to stay on the right path. the grand staircase brings you to the hall of the emperor. in the end, the journey is worth taking, for if you proceed correctly, you arrive at your goal. this has not been a dismal journey. it has taken place, after all, in a garden, a reminder that the earth can be a happy place, at least for those who might find themselves

as the guests of prince eugene. like much art throughout history, then, baroque was optimistic, but whose optimism? the 17th century was certainly a period of great expansiveness in european culture, both in geographical space and in the mind, but it was also the time of the inquisition, bitter religious wars which devastated the continent, and the time in which despotic monarchs dressed up their naked power in the trappings of benevolence. the style in which they did this can be seen here in the belvedere palace. italian baroque artists who developed this visual language used it to express the faith, confidence, and power of the catholic counter reformation church. it was a style ideally suited to expressing the interworkings of heavenly and earthly rule. so, in vienna, as throughout europe, kings and states seized upon this language

to make their assertion that their authority was sanctioned by god. it was a style which had a long life. indeed, it still speaks power to us today. the equestrian portrait, the man on horseback, the standard mode for portraying aristocratic and royal rulers-- the ruler powerfully up, the subject safely down. kings and princes were trained to ride horses in the improbable manner we see in equestrian portraits. they should be seen to control a rearing horse with just one hand on the reins. surely such a person could command a kingdom.

images of power tell us about those who make them, but even more about those who commission them. the dynastic monarchs of 17th-century europe, their power increasingly challenged by far-reaching social and economic change, sought to present themselves as heirs of the roman emperors, their authority divinely ordained. for them, art was an instrument of state power just as armies were, important in maintaining the absolute obedience of their subjects. we've seen how the counter reformation church demanded of its artists that their images should inflame the religious imagination of the people. just so, kings required of their court painters that their images should convey a sense of their benevolence, dignity, wealth, taste, and their divine right to rule. in 1622, maria de' medici, the mother of king louis xiii of france, commissioned peter paul rubens to paint for her new home in the luxembourg palace

a series of more than 30 enormous canvases. they commemorated her four-year rule as regent after the assassination of her husband henry iv until louis came of age in 1614. even though maria wasn't really the queen at all, rubens employs the full apparatus of glamour, power, and glory to proclaim the greatness of her rule. king henry is shown being carried off to heaven, yet the action rushes towards maria, whose position in the painting is higher than the king's. odd, since he's the one going to heaven. but it's in the religious paintings that rubens pulls out all the stops. his church paintings, such as the descent from the cross, served the requirements of roman catholic counter reformation ideology, inspiring faith, inducing piety.

the immediacy and individuality of the figures, the use of great circling arcs in the sweeping compositions, his dazzling use of color, all contribute to the heightened emotionalism that was intended to lift the spectator out of the everyday world into a state of exultation. his works are the most powerful expression of triumph and christianity. rubens achieved his success early as we see in this youthful self-portrait, together with his first wife. he was the superstar of the art world of the day, the most esteemed court painter in europe, when in 1628 he was summoned to spain to paint the king. from his capital at madrid, philip iv ruled the greatest empire in the world, with dominions stretching from the philippines to peru, but bogged down by a long war in the netherlands,

the most powerful state in europe was about to slip into decline. at a time beset with uncertainty, the arts flourished. of the painters he met at philip's court, rubens was particularly impressed by one-- the young diego velazquez. velazquez was an original who would paint a classical subject like bacchus getting drunk, with a group of real peasants. velazquez first drew the court's attention with his early paintings of daily life, what we call genre paintings. they were startling pictures, depicting things never before painted, such as the precise moment at which cooking eggs solidified. like many young painters of his time, velazquez was profoundly influenced by the naturalism of the italian, caravaggio. caravaggio placed miraculous events in a familiar, naturalistic setting. velazquez fused the real and the mythological

to create a new psychologically penetrating reality. in the forge of vulcan, he chooses the moment when the god apollo tells vulcan that his wife venus is making love to mars, the god of war. velazquez combines theatrical gesture with the astonished faces of real workmen, set in an authentic forge. he quickly became a favorite portrait painter of king philip. as court painter, velazquez would make a portrait of one of the royal family. assistants then made copies, which were sent to foreign courts. this was an important part of the diplomatic process and the business of finding marriage partners for royal offspring.

secure in his position as court painter, velazquez turned his attention to formal and painterly innovation. in his portraits of jesters and dwarfs, velazquez was free to experiment. he understood that paintings made according to the classical rules produced something other than what the eye sees. the eye cannot focus simultaneously on different planes. here, velazquez treats the background to a portrait as a blur. it works the way the eye sees. the boldest and most daring of velazquez' paintings is explored for us by professor simon schama of harvard university. las meninas is, in the most literal sense, a challenging painting. coming on it, we are challenged by no less than six pairs of eyes trained intently on us.

the effect is distinctly unsettling, as though we'd blundered into the royal domain where we had no business being. but one pair of eyes, one pair of hands, those of the artist, ensure that once we've strayed into velazquez' magic box, we can't casually take our leave and move to whatever else is in the next gallery. pinned to the spot by the most extraordinary visual conundrum ever painted, our first reaction is probably to find out what exactly is going on here. the most incurious explanation, but one we can surely start with, is velazquez has offered us an informal glimpse into his working day producing one of the many portraits he executed of the royal princesses designed to advertise their desirability

in one of the marriages on which dynastic politics so crucially turned. royal inbreeding had its problems, especially for the spanish hapsburgs, exaggerating their family trademarks-- pop eyes and lantern chin. and as if to compensate for this unpromising raw material, velazquez provided brilliant production numbers, gorgeously costumed, using a daring blob and blotch technique to give the illusion of a dancing light playing on the kind of fabric-- satins, taffetas-- that would best show them off. what else do we know for sure about this painting? from an account published 50 years after velazquez' death, we know the scene is set in the royal palace at the alcazar in the royal painter's studio. velazquez had been given responsibility for decorating the palace and installing its paintings, including two by rubens we can see dimly

hanging at the back of the painting. the same account identifies nearly everybody in the composition-- the 5-year-old princess, the infanta margarita, the maids of honor, the meninas themselves, courtiers and guards. by setting himself down amidst all this royal company, velazquez, decorated with the knightly cross of santiago, is staking out a claim to the nobility of his calling in a culture where a painter was no gentleman. the real subject of las meninas is not the royal princess, still less is it velazquez' social pretensions. the true subject is the art of painting itself. in the painting, velazquez shows us his whole box of tricks-- illusions of space, depth, and perspective. yet he always withholds from us the exact means by which he executes

those extraordinary effects and illusions. las meninas really is a conjuring trick of the greatest genius. like all conjuring tricks, it teases and provokes by multiplying uncertainties. we can't even be sure of the exact subject matter of the painting on which velazquez is working and whose surface is actually hidden from us. perhaps it is not the princess at the front, but a portrait of the king and queen, whose image, we belatedly realize, is reflected on the mirror at the back wall. yet in this cunning game between artist and beholder there is a third possibility, namely that that mirror reflection is not actually of the painting, but of the real king and queen who've dropped by to observe their artist at work. this would put me in front of the picture plane in the disconcerting position of the shoes of philip iv.

in all likelihood, the painting was meant for the private pleasure of the king alone. the privileged eavesdropping implied by the reflection would certainly explain all the attentiveness of those gazes, directed in different ways at the royal intruder. yet there really is nothing deferential about this painting at all. here, it is the artist rather than the king who is sovereign. after these amazing visual fireworks, it comes as something of an anticlimax to learn that velazquez spent the later part of his life in an almost obsessive quest for gentlemanly status. the snobbery that made him hunger to be a knight of the order of santiago may seem degrading to us. after all, his nobility lay in his art, which he had taken to undreamt-of levels of sophistication and technical virtuosity. perhaps our disappointment is a measure of the huge distance from his culture to ours.

his sublimely confident play with illusion and reality, with certainty and uncertainty, makes us want to recruit him as a fellow traveler of the modern world, but the knight of the order of santiago surrounded by other servants of the cult of royalty-- dwarfs, maids of honor, princesses, and courtiers-- stares back at us, the hidden contents of his enigmatic painting forever denying us that familiarity. even more successfully than velazquez, rubens played the court game to perfection. as the years passed, honors piled up. he was knighted. he undertook difficult diplomatic missions, but religious and territorial wars in northern europe raged on. rubens grew discouraged. he withdrew from court and public life and went home

to his baronial house in antwerp. his first wife had long since died. he married the 16-year-old helena fourment. it has been suggested that he was satirically alluding to himself and helena when he painted this aging but lusty satyr carrying off a young nymph. his paintings joyfully and sensually celebrated his love for helena.

he purchased the castle of steen and with his family and his titles retired to a twilight fantasy of country life as the lord of steen. rubens' landscapes are suffused with a kind of nostalgia. they evoke a dream of aristocratic life, a life based on the ownership of land. today it's only half an hour by car or train from the landlocked aristocratic landscape that rubens painted to the canals of the dutch netherlands. though not far apart physically, these two societies were as different at heart as their landscapes. the dutch escaped from feudalism by making new land. they built dikes against the sea in a communal effort that continues today. they made their own precarious land, and their peculiar geography made them. vermeer's view of delft shows us a secure town

that has confidently mastered its difficult environment. the sea shaped dutch society. but 80 bitter years of a cruel and bloody war for independence from their spanish rulers created a dutch nation. in the middle of the 17th century, seven provinces of the netherlands won their struggle for independence and established the predominantly protestant dutch republic. [bells ringing] in a europe dominated by absolutist and catholic monarchies--

spain, france, austria-- the republic was an island of relative freedom. the town hall of the dutch city of amsterdam, built in the 17th century, tells us something about the ideals of the dutch republic. it has none of the qualities of absolutist architecture. here no grand colonnade leads the world into a central focus as at saint peter's, rome. no succession of rooms and corridors and staircases takes us to the monarch's bedroom as at louis xiv's palace at versailles. here you have seven simple, unpretentioudoorways. the architecture of the new town hall, th, is an embodiment of the netherlands' independent political aspirations, an expression of amsterdam as a free city at the center of the world. in the 17th century, the dutch city of amsterdam was the greatest economic power in the world, a vast marketplace

where every kind of goods could be had-- pepper, whale oil, japanese lacquer, cloth, wine. the dutch became rich. they were the most urban society in europe-- literate, stable, well-fed, and decently housed. they knew themselves to be fortunate. they strongly identified with the chosen people of the old testament, with all that implied about obedience to god's will. in this peculiar new society, artists couldn't look to the traditional sources of patronage. there was no royal court. the churches had no pictures, as we can see in this painting of the mariakerk in utrecht by pietersz saenredam. nevertheless, the netherlands experienced an explosion in the production and consumption of art. the first mass art market in history arose because for the first time, ordinary people bought paintings, etchings, drawings.

artists produced in large quantity for that market. the society was defining itself in the images it produced. the simplicity of these domestic scenes is often deceptive. this still life with trout by willem claesz heda, while reassuring the dutch of the plenty in their lives, also warns them of the remorseless passage of time. jan steen's painting the world upside-down was intended to amuse, but it also cautions against the dangers of excess. here drink and sexual license cause a household to slide into complete domestic disorder. jan vermeer's woman weighing pearls stands before a painting of the last judgment, warning that wealth must not distract us

from our ultimate fate. the dutch genre paintings are not just innocent images of everyday life, but of the moral crises of everyday life. like other works of the baroque period, they convey a message. [speaking dutch] group portraits are still important today. in the 17th-century netherlands, they were essential, for power in the dutch republic was held not by a prince, but by corporate bodies, boards of governors, councils. so the group portrait was the equivalent of the equestrian portrait in aristocratic states. [speaking dutch] in the hands of the most remarkable of the dutch painters, the group portrait becomes an intense expression of the group ethos. the nightwatch.

more has been written about rembrandt than any other painter in the history of western art. if we chose one word that would sum up the essence of that art, it would probably be drama. the elements of rembrandt's art were put to the service of drama, none more so than light. his use of light was the opposite of vermeer's. the delft painter flooded his figures with an even, serene radiance so they sparkled with the intensity of an n image caught by a lens. rembrandt, on the other hand, turned the lights down low, plunging his histories into a theatrical darkness, the better to use his spotlight for dramatic emphasis and expressive brilliance. the painting was one of rembrandt's most important assignments, but it was also one of the most difficult.

militia pieces were hard work. in this picture by nicolaes eliasz pickenoy, we can see they were much like team photographs, expressions of the collective spirit. on the other hand, each of the sitters was paying a tidy sum to have his own individual likeness rendered faithfully and flatteringly. so, conventionally, they're lined up in front of us in a shallow, elongated space, marked out from each other just by variations in uniform or by gestures of painful artificiality. rembrandt brushed aside all these compromises. instead of lining up his figures in a freezelike format, he scooped out great hollows of recessed space at the back and front of the painting. and this sculpted space really gave rembndt the freedom at he needed to deploy his troops with animation.

the drastically foreshortened hand of captain banning cocq and the drastically foreshortened halberd-- that weapon there-- of lieutenant ruytenburch give the painting the quality of propulsion, so much movement forward that it almost threatens to trample the beholder with an irresistible onrush of energy. the painter seems to make virtue out of energetic disorder. it is how the dutch often like to see themselves, full of dynamism and high spirits. at the same time, rembrandt did his best to give the group a more soldierly appearance. the figures we see here loading the musket... shooting it off dangerously close to the lieutenant's hat, blowing the powder away from the top othe gun,

all correspond to the warlike values which this group of soldiers liked to believe they embodied. it's a group portrait and a history painting, something that testifies to the reassuring disorderliness of plain citizens. it's really chaos on an epic scale, something which immediately expresses not dumb discipline, but high animal spirits, the boisterous riot of energy, movement, and visual noise that explodes out from its center towards us. in every sense, to give it its correct title, the march out of the company of frans banning cocq. the flair for drama that invests the nightwatch with so much energy carries over into rembrandt's more intimate work. his portraits go far beyond the rendering of facial features. in the eyes of rembrandt's subjects,

we read personal and private story and psychological nuance. rembrandt made this self-portrait at the age of 23. it is rembrandt's steady, deep, probing gaze, that penetrating look to something beyond the surface, that distinguishes what many consider his greatest work, that monument of self-scrutiny, his self-portraits. in about 40 paintings, 20 engravings, and 10 drawings, rembrandt offers us himself, an individual. this extended act of self-portraiture was unprecedented in western art.

it may be instructive to look once more on velazquez' great meditation on art. the painter confronts us with a challenging stare, daring us to contemplate the natu of perceived reality. tthe highly structuredus social and political framework is part and parcel of the meaning of the painting. rembrandt also portrays himself confronting the viewer and in relation to his cra, but rembrandt is entirely alone with his palette, ready to define himself in his characteristic thick impasto, the paint troweled on and worked with his fingers rath than with the brush. rembrandt, in his solitude, with his direct look, and with his coarse, visibly applied paint, asserts his presence, his selfness, his individuality, as the matter for contemplation.

in the story of western art, the 17th century, the age of baroque, began through much of europe in subjection to the ideals of the italian renaissance. by the century's end, new artistic tastes had developed-- boldly naturalistic... richly sensual... ambitiously intellectual... passionate and profound... baroque artists had served a variety of masters. they had, as always, provided the images of power for absolute monarchs, whose subjects increasingly saw them as all too mortal. they provided religious images to bolster a faith shaken by the rise of modern science and religious conflict.

but something else had happened. by the end of the century, western artists had achieved as never before the depiction of inwardness. look how rembrandt fixes our gaze, draws us in, plays with our emotions... compelling our attention to the mystery of a single human heart. captioning performed by the national captioning institute, inc. captions copyright 1989 educational broadcasting corporation

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